I recently reran the NPC at schools my senior child is applying/potentially applying to. We have another child who is in their first year of a bachelor’s program. Because the kids will overlap by 3 years (assuming both stay on a standard 4 year track), I’ve been running the NPC calculator with a college sibling and without to get a feel for how things will change my younger child’s last year in college (I know it’s impossible to anticipate 3-4 years from now but I’m doing my best to be fiscally responsible; I don’t want to be caught off guard by a $20-30k jump).
I was surprised that Scripps college produced the same results with or w/o a college sibling. Every other meets need/CSS profile school I ran gave a different $ amount (range was ~$6-12k more without a sibling in college). We attended a Scripps financial aid info session about a month ago where they said siblings in college would still be taken into consideration so the calculator results were surprising.
I reached out to Scripps last week and they said that the NPC was indeed correct. They have been discussing how to handle the FAFSA changes and it sounds like they recently decided to follow FAFSA’s lead on no discount for college siblings. They said families could appeal and attempt to prove having multiple kids in college is a financial hardship (err, that seems pretty obvious to me…) but it wouldn’t be considered by default. There was some speculation and discussion with the financial aid officer that the type of school (private vs public) might matter and the FA director was still determining how to address the situation. Can anyone explain why they would use a fuzzy category that often has no direct relationship with real costs when the CSS profile asks for the actual college expenses incurred by a sibling? He heavily implied public was cheap/free–even referencing community college–and private was expensive. I wish it were that simple (older kid is at a public and I assure you, it’s not free or cheap–at least for us).
Has anyone else encountered the same results/answers either from a NPC or financial aid office? Because of our situation, and because we’ve attended 20+ college info sessions over the past year, I have asked every single time about how the college plans to handle the FAFSA changes/college sibling issue. Until this week, every private school said it would still be included in their institution’s formula. I’m nervous other schools will also change without warning.
3-4 years out is a long time in college admissions and financial aid. Schools have no idea what their policies might be then. Even if they say something now, there’s no assurance that will still be the case a few years out. Not only are practices and policies dynamic, but there is so much turnover in admissions and FA personnel each year…and new peeps often change things. Maybe some grandfather current students in, while some won’t. Not much you can do beyond what you already are.
I don’t think any of us can predict which profile schools might still consider sibling college expenses and which won’t 3-4 years down the road. They are faced with advantaging families who had their kids close together, a benefit those with kids farther apart can’t access…Reasonable people fall on both sides of the issue.
I ran the NPC at a number of CSS schools and all took into consideration two siblings in college.
But I did see for more than one school notation on the NPC that the numbers may not be accurate. I thought this was crazy, as how can a student be applying ED without a ballpark idea of the cost.
I think there is a lot of chatter that all the CSS schools will be taking siblings into consideration but realistically there has to be a few that may not.
Correct, and I am sure if this was a school we would be applying ED, I would have contacted the office. It certainly puts people applying for ED in a precarious position.
But most schools say we will compute any FA offer using the CSS form. It certainly has more information than the FAFSA. I don’t know what the FAFSA would have that is not included on the CSS, except Pell Grant information? I don’t really know but I do know we were told by our ED school to file FAFSA within two weeks of it coming out. The word “imperative” was even used!
I totally appreciate that no one can predict financial aid policies and trends of the future. I’m frustrated that one month ago I clearly asked how Scripps would address siblings in college in their aid formula (regarding next school year) and they have since changed their policy. If they were unsure at the time, they should have said so.
I understand that it feels like an advantage to provide more financial aid to families with multiple college kids (truly, I do). The reality is, if the formulas are heavily based on annual income/inflow of $, it’s logical that they also focus on outgoing expenses. I wish the federal formula went into more depth, however, I understand why they don’t (not just for financial aid but taxes and other federal programs). As someone who lives in a HCOL, it’s frustrating.
If anyone hears of other meets need/CSS profile schools who have removed siblings in college from their formula for next school year, please share. I’m very curious if the trend will spread.